Konrad Werner: The Ministry For Being More German

Lorelei

If you are reading this you may very well not be German, but are living in Germany. But before you fall to brooding upon your fate, you might like to know that the Berlin government, like the federal German one, has a designated "integration commissioner".

She, for it is a she, is here to help. You. How? Does she explain the meaning and purpose of the Anmeldung ritual? Does she provide translators at the Ausländerbehörde? Does she point out which is the best €1.49 wine in Lidl? Does she provide weekly annotations to the plot of Tatort? Does she let you open your presents on Christmas Eve? Does she stroke you behind your ears, popping morsels of chocolate-covered gingerbread into your mouth while softly singing the lament of the Rhine maidens that shipwrecked the sailors on the Loreley?

Sadly, no. According to the official Berlin government website, Monika Lüke, newly appointed this month, is there to "formulate the basic questions of immigrant and integration policy of the Berlin senate, and to coordinate these with other state departments." Wait! That's not all! "Another important task is the analysis and the conception of measures to dismantle integration inhibitions in the legal, administrative and social spheres." I think I'd prefer the Rhine maidens thing.

The opposition parties also lined up to get their boot in at poor old Kolat, criticizing the senator for reducing the importance of the commissioner's job, and concluding that Berlin effectively "no longer has an integration commissioner", as the Green Party "participation" spokeswoman Susanne Kahlefeld said. But then, given that since the job was set up in 1981, all of Berlin's integration commissioners – that's three of them now – have been white German academics with no immigrant background, no one is likely to notice anyway. That's not Lüke's fault, because "integration" is about as useful a concept as "cheesey-peas". What does it mean? Being more German? In which case, Mrs. Lüke, on behalf of all immigrants in Berlin, point us towards the best cheap booze and sing to us legends of the Rhine. Or leave us alone.

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Comments (3)

the ministry for being more German

As usual intergration issues being headed by Germans for the Germans.Its all about them,telling immigrants what to do and not asking them what they think.One American put it in Ex Berlin, stay, work, pay taxes and shut up.

terry muvanya wischmannmore than 6 years ago

What is "German"?

Being more German...I suppose that's entirely a matter of perspective and ideology. For a Canadian like myself, "being more German" means efficiency in all realms of social structure and transportation (if you've never been to Canada, consider yourself lucky...public transit is like being on an Orwellian LSD trip), an insistence upon affordability for basic goods, not making an extreme and negative public spectacle of yourself, and maintaining social order for the greater good (as opposed to the individual, as it is in North America, hence all of our avoidable problems...we are all spoiled, coddled brats).

For others, "being German" might mean staring needlessly at strangers, quietly judging, eating terrible cuisine, following the herd, using deviant art forms, as a means to deeply express how you feel, having no knowledge of what true Western "cool" means, and cultivating guilt for WW2 atrocities whilst secretly loathing foreigners.

Who knows. You Germans are a complicated, interesting lot, nuanced and hard to generalize about, but absolutely lovely. And be endlessly thankful that you're not the walking dead known as the Swiss.